Artificial sweetners have been employed to replace the socalled natural sweetners in foods for a substantial period of time. Originally these artificial sweetners were used primarily for food products made specially for people suffering from diabetes. However, a trend has been developing over the past twenty or thirty years in which a substantially higher volume of artificially sweetened food has been consumed by diet conscious Americans as part of an attempt to control or reduce their weight.
In addition, the past fifteen years has seen the inauguration and growth of sales of artificially sweetened canned soft drinks, both carbonated and noncarbonated, to a point where these beverages have a substantial market, in many cases, rivaling their naturally sweetened counterparts.
At the present time, by far the most common artificial sweetner is saccharine. While saccharine is a compound which produces the sweetening taste sensation at a level many times greater than an equivalent amount of sugar, there is a limiting factor to its use and that is the bitter aftertaste associated with its consumption. This is true even when saccharine is used at the extremely low levels needed to produce equivalent sweetness to comparably high levels of sugar and is particularly apparent in products having a high sweetness level such as certain canned fruits and, particularly artificially sweetened soft drinks because, in the latter case, the sweetness flavor sensation contributes substantially to the overall flavor of the beverage itself.
Also, and perhaps more importantly, levels of saccharine have been utilized which produce a sweetness level less than their naturally sweetened counterpart beverages because the amount of saccharine which would produce the desired level of sweetness, theoretically, produces such a pronounced aftertaste as to be substantially unpalatable. Also, and perhaps because of this factor, when saccharine is employed at levels which would produce an equivalent sweetness to that traditionally associated with naturally sweetened beverages, there is very little noticeable increase in sweetness resulting from the addition of the last incremental amounts.